Slaying Victim Was a Friend to Down and Out

A man who was clubbed and stabbed to death in his home early Saturday morning was characterized by friends as a good Samaritan to the neighborhood’s homeless and poor people.

Police said Sunday that the man--identified by neighbors as David Bird, 42, an electrician with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--was killed by a parolee he had befriended a few hours earlier and invited home for a beer.

Vincent Leroy Brown, 41, was arrested on suspicion of murder by detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division shortly after the attack. He was held without bail at Van Nuys Jail.

Authorities withheld an official identification of the victim pending notification of family.

Barbara Adams, who lives two houses from Bird’s in the 7400 block of Tampa Avenue, said Bird often invited downtrodden people into his home during the four years he lived there.

“If I tell the truth about him, it is going to sound like I am knocking him, but I’m not,” Adams said. “It’s just that he was friendly and gullible and not very bright in his choice of friends. I think the fact that he invited the wrong people [into his home] sort of got him into trouble.”

Neighbors Bill and Nina Watters characterized Bird as being friendly and open to everyone. “David would help anybody,” Bill Watters said. “He took in stray cats and dogs. He just had a warmhearted nature for people and animals.”

Nina Watters said that Bird’s own family sometimes disapproved of his actions. His brother, Randy Bird, once made a homeless woman leave the house, Watters said. But David Bird kept inviting homeless people to stay with him. “He had a heart of gold. He was very trusting.”

Natalie DiGiovanni, who is Randy Bird’s girlfriend, said David Bird let homeless people stay with him until they were able to find a place of their own.

“David would bring them in, talk to them and get them to the point where they felt able to be on their own. He would try to build up their confidence,” DiGiovanni said. “I think he was kind of lonely and this was how he found happiness, by helping street people.”

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Several hours before he was killed, Bird went to a convenience store with a homeless woman who was staying at his house, said Det. Rick Swanston of the LAPD. The two met Brown there, Swanston said, struck up a conversation and invited him back to the house.

Without warning at about 4:30 a.m., Swanston said, Brown began to beat Bird with a baseball bat and also stabbed him and slashed his throat. Investigators said Brown then ransacked the house looking for valuables.

Brown called his 60-year-old mother, with whom he lived about two blocks away, and asked her to pick him up, authorities said. When she arrived, he put his bicycle into the trunk of her car and left with less than $100, according to Swanston.

The homeless woman--whose name was withheld by police to protect her safety--witnessed the attack and called police, Swanston said. The woman identified Brown, who returned to the crime scene while police were still there. Randy Bird learned of his older brother’s death when he and DiGiovanni stopped by David’s house on the way to a birthday party early Saturday afternoon, DiGiovanni said.

“We were driving down Tampa and we saw the police cars out front,” she said. “When the detective came out and told him what happened, [Randy] looked at me and he was just white. I touched his hands and they were like ice cubes. Then he started to cry.”

Later that evening, DiGiovanni said, they went into the house and looked around. “Randy just walked from room to room in a daze. He just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ”